Therapy
by jenni3penny
Summary: "Because she'd once thought that nothing Cal could do, simply nothing, would ever surprise her again." Silly & sweet Callian.
1. Chapter 1

"What, darling?" His voice is throttled low and humming, murmuring a slide of warmth over her as quiet as the shush of his fingers. "You're mumblin'."

He surprises her still – and that's so incredibly comforting.

Because she'd once thought that nothing Cal could do, simply nothing, would ever surprise her again. He's reckless, thoughtless, sometimes absolutely brainless. He doesn't think ahead unless its a strategical means to his ends. He doesn't consider the ramifications or the debts other people may have to pay for his actions. Anymore, his childishly impulsive way of doing things (antics, just... stupid antics) just doesn't at all surprise her.

"You're moaning." he whispers with a proud (but, surprisingly, not smug) warmth. "You like that."

It's not a question of like nor dislike.

 _God_ , not now. There's no way in hell she can hide how much she's enjoying this.

This gentleness is a surprise to her, though. This absolute patient control of his hands and body and the delicious heat of his accented whispering as he leans hovering over her shoulder.

Because it's a statement made with a smile in the hushing of his voice just before he rubs his nose against her temple and kisses her hairline. "More? Yeah?"

She simply sighs in answer, accepts the intimate tenderness that doesn't generally live within the walls of work.

Yes, she intentionally keeps him at a distance while they're working.

They'd never get any work done if she didn't.

"C'mon, Gill." He rises straight again along the back of her chair, hands curled with a delicious near possessive quality around her throat as his thumbs ridge up and down the tension that cords the back of her neck. "Tell me. Talk to me."

Ironic, isn't it? How often she has to try to pry information out his mouth and here he is, a near pitiful beg in his tone as he implores her to speak.

There's a certain feeling of control and power in that alteration of station.

The shift is subtle but obvious and it's, at once, all she needs to trust him.

Because he's offering her vulnerability without remorse or annoyance.

He just wants the reassurance.

She just wanted him to ask for it.

"If you stop," she murmurs, eyes dipped closed and chin lowering forward as he presses the pads of his thumbs up the back of her neck, "I _will_ kill you."

"Yeah?" His grin is more than smug this time and she can hear the evidence – doesn't need to see it. It's Lightman to _the Maximum_ , haughty and cheeky and entirely himself. "You _do_ like it."

God, yes, she likes it. She adores his hands and the intense habit he has of closing them up along her throat, her neck, her shoulders. It's an uncontrolled and unconscious tick of his, something he doesn't necessarily recognize he's even doing. He can't _not_ touch and his fingers have a habit of making her throat, her cheeks, her face and shoulders their home. It's endearing in a way, though slightly possessive. Endearing in that it seems a need that he has, something compulsive. A movement that would otherwise imply control always seems, on him, like a request for permission.

"More hands and less talk," she replies dryly, letting her chin go against her chest as his fingertips start minute circles on the sides of her neck. He's rubbing heat into the edge of her hairline, furthering the touches higher on her scalp and pressing away the tension that had bunched up in her muscles.

A chuckle breaks off him but quietly, his fingers spreading out to rise up the back of her head and then stroke back down through her hair. "More talk and you'll get more than hands, love."

She hadn't necessarily expected a massage when he'd dropped into her office, his energy bouncing him around the room and directly in opposition to her exhaustion. It hadn't taken him long to realize that the paperwork slushed and scattered all over her desk had dragged every ounce of lightness out of her and that she was slumping incrementally lower in the ergonomic (but still often uncomfortable) chair. There had been a sort of apologetic regret in his eyes when he'd noted how swamped she was by the accounts paperwork, the taxes, payroll, all the business-like things that had gotten lost and forgotten when he'd dragged her into their most recent case.

She hadn't expected him to be so sweet, even as she'd side watched his approach and felt his fingers curl her shoulder so weightily warm. Though, she realizes that she probably should have.

He'd been especially cheeky and loving and bright all morning. There'd been a distinct lack of moodiness since they'd finished up that last case.

"Maybe I'm the shy quiet type," Gill offers tiredly, letting his hands find her shoulders again with a simultaneous downward stroke of both hands. She lets another sigh of comfort expand from her lungs after speaking, breathes it into the room as his thumbs find her shoulder blades again.

"Maybe you been moanin' for the last five minutes so go on and give the other leg a pull."

She snorts into the obvious innuendo but ignores it as his hands tighten on her shoulders. His voice warms up again as he squeezes her, his voice buttery soft as his thumbs dig at her muscles.

"Head down. On the desk."

She leans forward into the assurance of his touch, the insistence of his voice as he starts rubbing against her shoulders and back in earnest. He's silent in his movements and his hands are graciously warm, bending comfort and gentle pressure into the silken fabric of her shirt. She can feel muscles tighten reflexively, stubbornly. Then all at once they start to go loose, stretching into the sure press and rub of his fingers, the heels of his palms.

" _Jesus_ , Cal."

"M'obviously doin' somethin' wrong if I haven't leveled up into 'God' status yet." He grunts annoyance, mostly at himself. He's usually excellent at finding the right button to push, the right sensitive spot to scratch at, the right angle for the equation. She doesn't doubt that the slow erosion of her usual ' _not-at-work_ ' stubbornness has created a mission in him. "Tell me?"

"Cal - "

"Tell me more." His finger makes a lazy path down the length of her spine, the touch an obvious tease and a reverence at once.

His hands are doting on her, adoring her.

That's the difference, maybe. That it's not sexual so much as intimate and loving (well, _and_ a little sexual).

He surprises her sometimes still. In that he truly loves her, cares for her, wants to take care of her, wants her happy. It's not a surprise of character – she's always known that despite his cocky fronting, his inability to sometimes control himself, he's a legitimately good man. It's a surprise that after all their years... it's something that still gets stronger by day rather than fading.

"Lower." She arches her shoulders, brings her arms up under her head so that she can stretch out the aches from her lower back, his hand following the movement so that he's rubbing pressure into the dip of her spine. "Harder."

" _Gillian_." It's a sort of warning in his voice, strained but authoritative, warm but direct.

It's similar to the tone he gets when he's too close to coming for her and he can't seem to slow his body, his brain, or their world down.

It's a sound in his voice that she has memorized and owned and loved.

She smiles her cheek into the fabric of her sleeve, head turned so that she can still smell his cologne so close. "You did tell me to do more talking."

"You're a delightful little wench, y'know that?" The rumbled humor in his voice is edged, wanting and wanton at once and, God, it's so... delicious. "Payback's a _bitch_ , darling."

She smiles, rubs her cheek on her sleeve as his hands seem to worship the curvature of her spine, "I hope so."


	2. Chapter 2

He feels the moment when he loses her, when she goes unconscious under his touch. Her entire body loosens up and goes still under his slowed touching and he can't help but grin, unaware how wide the smile is until he lifts one of his hands from her spine and rubs his knuckles into his lips. She's right adorable, really. Her entire body is curled forward on the desk and she's got pretty lips parted against her sleeve, sleep puffing past them and her eyelids closed dark under exhaustion. Cal presses the other hand flat against her back, lets his fingers span out from from spine on either side and counts the slow beats of her breathing, waits out the thudded repetition of her heartbeat. He can feel the pulse of her and for a moment, he lets himself focus on it, his fingers unconsciously and slowly clenching into her shirt as the thump-thumping continues under his touch.

"Cal?"

"Shhh." He frowns into the fact that he's unintentionally woken her but takes advantage of it, stroking his hand around the side of her rib cage and turning it to the inside of her arm. "C'mere."

"Sorry, babe," she shushes into his pulling, her other hand lifting to scrub adorably over her face.

"S'alright," he mutters, slack stunned a little by the endearment and how easily she's let it slip from her lips. Not like she hasn't been so sweet and uttered silly little terms before, playfully or even just affectionately. This lights him up, though. Puffs him up a little with pride that even half conscious and not at all coherent - she's so blindly comfortable mumbling it into the pull of his hands. She's said it so blithely, not at all intentionally, just instinctual and perfect to his ears.

She's said it in a way that now, finally, really belongs only to him.

Cal kisses lightly on her temple, tugs her heavy arms up slowly and curls them on his shoulders, "Come with me, love."

"M'not in the mood, Cal." Her voice is a little peevish but she links her arms on his neck, not entirely aware as she scrubs her face tiredly down.

He snorts a laugh, lets it heat along her ear as she weighs onto his shoulders, putting most of her weight into him as he tucks her hips closer to his and nudges the chair away with his foot. "Not like you'd be any fun at it right now anyhow, Foster. Just to the couch before you ruin all my hard work."

"Sorry I'm grumpy." She relaxes perceptibly into him, lets him lean and carry most of her weight backwards as her voice treads apologetic and self conscious. "I don't wanna do this anymore."

"Which bit?" He isn't much worried that she's referring to him considering that even as she'd said it she had just clung tighter to him, wiping a sleepy kiss on his jaw.

An exasperated groaning comes up her throat, leans on him just as much as she does. "The boring bit. I'm always the boring bit."

"The paperwork?" Cal asks quietly, lifting his jaw from how tingling her hair brushing his cheek has become, how much it makes his skin flush up along his throat. "Make Torres do it."

"She'll just brush it off and run after another case." The tripping of her heels after they round her desk has him catching up against her waist, tugging her still and tight into his chest as he looks over how unevenly she's slumped into him. Her arms come down slowly and she curls into him, elbows and forearms folded up between them as she hums comfort and lays her head into his shoulder. "She's just like you. They're all just like you."

"Arguin' about the children, are we?" Cal kisses the question into her hair, lowering his voice back to its original softness as she snugs closer. "Takin' after me?"

"It's not funny. Not fair."

"Down y'go, darling." He laughs lightly into how heavily she follows his prodding, how compliant she seems when she just flops onto her own couch and goes limply stretched and silly. His hand catches against her as he bends, fingertips tapping her calf as she grumps a little noise out past closed lips. She's bein' intentionally pouty, playing at letting him take care of her, enjoyin' every damn minute of it, she is. "Shoes now. C'mon."

Her eyes are sleep lidded and darker in color than usual, slim as she watches his movements and lifts her foot into his hands as he tugs a shoe off her. She looks deliciously comfortable under his care, more pleasantly playful than expected. He can feel the grin rise up on his lips but doesn't much care how obvious it is, not when she groans an appreciative sound of happiness and lifts the other foot. Her movement is near silly but he catches against her heel and tugs the other shoe off as well, letting both of them thunk to the floor before he lowers her legs back to the couch. One hand takes a stroke against one of her nylon covered calves and she makes another sound up the stretch of her throat that has him arching a glance over her and that same grin goes wider.

Gillian's fingers catch out prying on the fabric of his shirt, tugging him closer to the edge of the couch as her head banks back, swaying with continued sleepiness and bemusement. "Stay with me."

"Where am I goin', huh? Nowhere. Tuck in," he demands, voice churlish and sharp even as he bites down on a grin, watches her wedge into the back of the couch and make room with appreciative eyes.

It's a hell of an invitation, just laying into the safe and innocent heat of her. It's something he hadn't allowed himself for years, hadn't allowed himself to consider actually. But it's his now, right? It's freely offered and given and it's, well _fuck_ , it's _Gillian_. And despite the fact that, at times, he _can_ actually rely on better judgment... He cannot deny himself this pleasure, this surety.

Not when stretching out on the cushions beside her is the closest to a salvation of sins he's ever gonna get.

"We can't sleep another night on a couch, Cal." She says it as he does his best to curl up on and around her, angling them both up so that they're half facing each other on the couch.

He grunts a sound of utter disregard, waving off the veracity of her argument just to further enjoy the pleasure of how warm and solid and curving her hip is pressed so tightly into his crotch. He wiggles closer, makes a giddy little show of dancing his body closer up and over and around her and it near immediately brings on the desired effect, has her the nearest to girlish giggling she ever actually gets. The sound of it is a balm to him, a warm benediction of sorts.

"Gonna watch me sleep?" she asks into the scruff on his jaw.

He lifts the free shoulder in a lazy shrugging while his hand is shifting hers, drawing her palms curled and up into his chest. "Might do."

Gill gives up a snort, a puff of breath against his ear that makes the entire back of his neck tense up in a pleasurable sensation. "Freak."

"What's that say 'bout you then?" Cal asks quietly, conversationally and nearly lacking in attention as she threads one thigh between his and rubs their legs closer into a warm tangle. "Eh, love?"

"Questionable judgment."

A broad chuckle of honest amusement that he can't contain comes off him, unconsciously nodding agreement with her sharp assessment before he turns his jaw down and catches her glance. "Anythin' else?"

She makes a quick sound of agreement, her eyes gone more brilliant than blue as she smiles. "Accent fetish."

"Oh, _really_? And then what?"

A thoughtful hum passes her lips as she rubs her cheek closer against him. "And I love your stupid face."

"Excellent," he murmurs, palm wiping down over her eyes to shut them as he lays his lips onto her forehead. "Go back to sleep now."


End file.
